Experience and social factors influence movement and habitat selection in scimitar-horned oryx (Oryx dammah) reintroduced into Chad.

Reintroduced animals-especially those raised in captivity-are faced with the unique challenge of navigating a wholly unfamiliar environment, and often make erratic or extensive movements after release. Naïveté to the reintroduction landscape can be costly, e.g., through increased energy expenditure, greater exposure to predation, and reduced opportunities to forage. Integration with an extant population may provide opportunities for social information transfer. However, in the absence of interactions with residents, it is unclear how individual and social learning may affect an animal's ability to track resources in an unfamiliar landscape. We use integrated step selection functions (iSSFs) to address these knowledge gaps, by evaluating the extent to which environmental factors, individual experience (time since release), and social information-sharing (group size) influence movement decisions by scimitar-horned oryx (Oryx dammah) reintroduced into their native range for the first time in ca. 30 years. We found that both experience and social factors influenced the habitat selection and movement behavior of reintroduced oryx. Of four candidate iSSFs, the model that included environmental, experience, and group size variables performed best in both dry and wet periods. Statistically significant interaction terms between environmental variables and experience were generally larger than similar terms for group size, indicating that experience may affect habitat selection by reintroduced oryx more strongly than social factors. These findings may inform the management of recovering wildlife populations, update widely-held expectations about how released ungulates acclimate to novel landscapes, and demonstrate the utility of long-term monitoring of reintroduced populations.

Systemic drugs in patients with skin diseases.

Systemic drugs play an important role in the modern practice of dermatology. The purpose of this article is to review systemic therapies in the following categories: antifungals, immunosuppressants, retinoids, and biologic immunomodulators. We provide a historical perspective, summarize current clinical indications, and discuss novel mechanisms of action for each drug. Suggestions for dosing regimens and laboratory monitoring are given. To help clinicians safely implement these therapies in their practice, we review major adverse reactions and clinically important drug interactions of these systemic medications in dermatology.

Locomotor rehabilitation in a complex virtual environment.

Virtual reality (VR) technology offers a new and safe way to increase practice time and provide the varied environments and constraints needed to optimize locomotor training. Our specific objectives are (1) to create a virtual environment (VE) coupled with a self-paced treadmill for locomotor training; (2) to compare temporal and distance measurements of gait during treadmill walking while looking at different scenarios of VE; and (3) to develop a protocol optimized for the training of locomotor disorders after stroke. A motorized treadmill was mounted on a six-degree-of-freedom motion platform. VEs were created using commercial software (SoftImage) and projected on a large screen, while system control was administered through the CAREN software (Motek BV). The instantaneous treadmill speed and scene progression were servo-controlled. Preliminary results show that healthy subjects are able to have full control of their own walking speed both on the treadmill and within the virtual scene, while experiencing a strong sense of presence. A street crossing training protocol has been developed for locomotor training. It is expected that locomotor training with increasingly complex VEs will allow persons with stroke to increase progressively their locomotor capacity, as required and entrained by the VE.

Comparison of the NIST SURF and argon miniarc irradiance standards at 214 nm.

Comparison of NIST's SURF-II primary irradiance standard and argon miniarc irradiance standard at 214 nm with an uncertainty of ~3% shows that at this wavelength these irradiance standards agree to within the uncertainties of 1.3 and 7%, respectively, assigned to them by NIST.